Senior Legal Advisor: Equity Transactions

Job Description

To proactively provide specialised legal advice and support on equity transactions related to the DBSA’s financing activities. The role will focus on structuring and executing equity investments, ensuring that all actions are legally sound and compliant with regulatory standards, and protecting DBSA's investment portfolio. This role also includes mitigating legal risks, preventing adverse consequences for the DBSA, and offering expert legal counsel across the organisation, particularly in equity-related matters.

Key Responsibilities

Key Performance Areas:
Legal Advisory Functions:

- Collaborate with project teams to support Investment Officers in structuring equity transactions.
- Conduct thorough due diligence on equity investment opportunities and transactions to identify any legal risks or issues that need to be addressed
- Provide advice on the structuring, negotiation, and documentation of equity investments.
- Provide strategic legal advice to clients or internal stakeholders on equity-related matters.
- Review and draft term sheets, shareholder agreements, subscription agreements, and related equity transaction documentation.
- Lead negotiations on equity transactions with clients, co-investors, and stakeholders to achieve favourable legal outcomes.
- Monitor and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements related to equity investments.
- Manage relationships with internal and external counsel for complex equity transactions.
- Provide legal support on issues arising in relation to equity exits or restructuring.
- Offer ongoing support in monitoring equity portfolios from a legal perspective.
- Handle disputes related to equity transactions and oversee the legal aspects of governance issues in relation to equity stakes held by the DBSA.
- Provide training to legal staff or other units on equity-related legal issues and best practices.
- Perform other legal services to business as required.

Key Measurements of Outputs:
1. Time taken to prepare and or review contracts, agreements and legal opinions.
2. Quality and accuracy of contracts, agreements, opinions and solutions provided.
3. Quality of legal due diligence on equity investments performed.
4. Effective management of legal claims and litigation risks.
5. Management of total case / agreement / opinion / other legal costs.
6. No litigation due to contractual errors and or omissions.
7. Effective monitoring of the contracts and agreements.
8. Clean audit.
Key Internal Liasion Relationships:
1. DBSA committees and unit managers
2. Other Professionals in the Legal Unit
3. DBSA Credit Committees
4. Investment team
5. Technical Specialists
Key External Liasion Relationships:
1. External Customers and DBSA Suppliers
2. External Counsel

Expertise & Technical Competencies

Qualifications and Experience:
Minimum Requirements:
1. A Bachelor of Laws degree (LLB) or Legal postgraduate qualification.
2. Admitted Attorney/Advocate of the High Court of South Africa.
3. A minimum of 5 years post-admission experience in a commercial/finance/banking or corporate law environment gained at a commercial banking, specialist law firm/ corporate or similar institution.
4. Extensive experience in equity investments, private equity structures, asset management funds, en commandite partnerships, including structuring, negotiation, and legal documentation.
Desired Requirements:
1. Experience in public-private partnership projects which include equity components.
Technical Competencies:
a) Written communication

- Understands that different writing styles are required for different documents or audiences.
- Write effective correspondence, prepares questions and reports, statements of circumstance and briefing notes.
- Reviews others’ documents for clarity and impact.
- Has a solid mastery of writing principles such as grammar, sentence construction etc.

b) Presentation skills

- Can reinforce key presentation points with examples.
- Is able to translate technical terminology into language understandable to the audience.
- Has insight into the audience’s behavior and motivation and responds appropriately and professionally, adapting communication style as appropriate.

c) Reporting

- Designs / customizes reports to meet user needs.
- Prepares complex or tailored reports, gathers information from a variety of sources, analyses and includes in a report.
- Keeps standard reports under review and proposes improvements to meet user needs.

d) Legal Knowledge

- Extensive knowledge and understanding of the principles of DBSA.
- Wide-ranging knowledge of industry best practice, and keeps abreast of, interprets and informs on developments in the area of new laws and regulations relevant to DBSA.

e) Legal Policy Knowledge

- Ability to represent DBSA in the court of law when required.
- Ability to draft non-standard legal documents per procedures.
- Ability to draft more sensitive policy and legal procedures to be followed by stakeholders of DBSA, and review and refine in response to inputs from relevant stakeholders, for approval.
- Ability to understand legal rights and responsibilities and the possession of authority to make legal decisions.
- Protects the organisation’s legal rights, utilizing a broad knowledge base of all major legal disciplines

f) Presentation Skills

- Knows how to deliver arguments persuasively by employing a range of advanced presentation techniques (e.g., the appropriate use of body language, how to close a presentation so that the audience continues to think about the subject matter etc.).
- Has knowledge of various feedback mechanisms to check levels of audience understanding.

g) Business Acumen

- Takes actions to fit business strategy.
- Assesses and links short-term tasks in the context of long-term business strategies or perspectives.
- Reviews own actions against the organisation's strategic plan; includes the big picture when considering possible opportunities or projects or thinks about long-term applications of current activities.
- Anticipates possible responses to different initiatives.
- Understands the projected direction of the industry and how changes might impact the organisation.

h) Negotiations

- Has an appreciation of cultural sensitivities and differences.
- Effectively employs a variety of advanced behavioural/interpersonal competencies to control the negotiation situation.
- Is able to take the lead in a variety of sensitive negotiation situations requiring high levels of tact and diplomacy.
- Is able to place a discrete negotiation situation within the context of a broader long-term relationship and is not threatened by conceding ground to protect the longer-term interests of DBSA.

Required Personal Attributes

Behavioural Competencies:
a) Customer Service Orientation

- Tries to understand the underlying needs of customers and matches these needs to available or customized products and services.
- Adapts processes and procedures to meet on-going customer needs.
- Utilises the feedback received by customers, in order to develop new and/or improve existing services/ products that relate to their on-going needs.
- Thinks of new ways to align DBSA’s offerings with future customer needs.

b) Self-awareness and Self Control

- Withholds effects of strong emotions in difficult situations.
- Keeps functioning or responds constructively despite stress.
- May apply special techniques or plan ahead of time to manage emotions or stress.

c) Strategic and Innovative Thinking

- Experiments with new approaches, tests scenarios, questions assumptions and challenges conventional thinking.
- Creates new concepts that are not obvious to others, leveraging internal and external sources of information, to build incremental revenue and growth opportunities.

d) Driving delivery of results

- Sets challenging goals that will have a significant impact on the business or support the organisational strategy.
- Commits significant resources and/or time to ensure that challenging goals are achieved, while also taking action to mitigate risk.

e) Teamwork & Cooperation

- Acts to promote a friendly climate and good morale and resolves conflicts.
- Creates opportunities for cross-functional working.
- Encourages others to network outside of their own team/department and learn from their experience.

f) Decisiveness

- Acts promptly to address urgent needs, taking quickly those decisions which need to be taken.
- Assesses available information to reach a clear view of key options and selects the best option at the time.

- Thinks on their feet when necessary.
- Changes his/her perception, ideas or alters normal procedures to fit a specific situation to get a job done and/or meet company goals.

g) Impact and Influence

- Includes careful preparation of data for presentation.
- Makes two or more different arguments or points in a presentation or a discussion.

h) Achievement Orientation

- Focuses on new or more effective ways of improving own work and meeting targets.
- Focuses on raising quality, customer satisfaction and revenues.
- Makes specific changes to systems and processes in order to improve efficiency and quality.
- Formulates own objectives and action plans in order to achieve a measurable improvement in the future.